


Torment

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel (Supernatural) to the Rescue, Cursed Dean Winchester, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Emotionally Hurt Dean Winchester, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, POV Sam Winchester, Protective Castiel, Psychological Torture, Sam Winchester in Trouble, Scared Sam Winchester, Tiny Sam Winchester, Torture, Worried Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 15:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17769275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When Dean triggers a curse trap in the bunker, it changes him and Sam pays the price.Castiel arrives in time to save him, but the damage to the Winchester family may already be irreparable, unless they can find a way to push through.





	Torment

**Author's Note:**

> This is a dark story.
> 
> Dean treats Sam horrifically after taking steps to ensure his little brother is left vulnerable, but in his defence it is the fault of the curse.
> 
> If you find mental and emotional torture, confinement, or anything involving snakes triggering, please proceed with caution.

The bunker was huge before, a warren of corridors, rooms, dungeons, archives.

Now, given Sam’s new dimensions, it’s like a city to him. Fortunately full of numerous places to hide.

And yet…

Because Dean knows him so well, because they are synched, it never seems to take his big brother long to find him.

And each time he’s caught after a failed escape attempt, his punishment gets worse.

++

It starts on the Saturday night after Cas leaves to visit Claire. Dean’s ordered pizza, and they’re just sitting down to a slice and a beer, waiting for the movie to start, when the power goes out.

They always keep a flashlight in every room, just in case, and Dean takes it and heads off, grumbling about shitty wiring, and forgetting that the electrics in the bunker are older than both of them put together; they should be grateful they’ve lasted _this_ long.

The lights come back on after twenty five minutes, but Dean doesn’t appear straight away, taking long enough that Sam’s starting to worry.

Dean knows his way around a house; he can fix plumbing and electricity and a million other things.

But shit happens, and maybe he got a shock, or something, or maybe he’s lurking down the corridor, waiting for Sam to come looking for him, so he can jump out like a gibbering idiot, and then stand there laughing hard and holding his sides like he’s scared he might break a rib.

Sam goes to check on him anyway, and finds it's none of the above.

Unfortunately.

++

He always fights, not that it ever helps. He digs in with tiny fingernails, kicks out and even tries to bite, but all that does is make Dean grin down at him, like he’s enjoying Sam’s newfound vulnerability.

“Teeny tiny little moose,” he singsongs, and he squeezes his hand shut just a little further until Sam’s finding it hard to breathe.

When he sees where Dean’s headed, he struggles even harder.

He ends up in the tub anyway, and watches as Dean puts the plug in and turns on the cold tap.

The bunker has amazing water pressure, and it’s been something they’ve both been grateful for. Until now.

Sam backs up fast until he has nowhere to go, and the water knocks him off his feet. He forces himself up, scrabbles at the worn enamel, trying to find a handhold but it’s futile.

And just when he thinks Dean’s going to drown him, the water stops.

It’s waist high, and it’s cold enough to make Sam shiver.

“I think maybe an hour,” Dean says. “You can work on your backstroke.”

And then Dean’s gone, and by the time he finally comes back, and scoops his brother out of the water, Sam’s shaking so hard he swears his bones are rattling.

++

He isn’t sure what’s keeping Cas. It was supposed to be a couple of days, tops, and then their angel would be back.

But time’s hard to track, like this. Dean likes to disrupt his sleep, sometimes keeping Sam awake for hours, and then letting him doze for a few minutes before prodding him with pens, or pinging rubber bands at him, and one time pushing him off the table, letting Sam think he’d fall to his death.

Dean had put a couple of cushions down on top of each other, so Sam has a semi-soft landing, but after that he doesn’t dare fall asleep, not even if Dean promises him it’ll be okay.

So maybe it’s only been one day. Or maybe it’s been longer. Maybe Cas phoned, and Dean talked him into staying away for a few more days.

Or maybe Cas has already come back, and Dean did something to him.

Even so, Sam prays. He knows his story will sound ridiculous and Cas might think they’re pranking him, again, and stay away to teach them a lesson.

So Sam’s as persuasive as he can be, and in the end his fear and his exhaustion and his pain win out and he cries. He’s desperate, and unashamed.

Because right now, Cas is the only person who can save them.

++

The next time Dean snatches him up, Sam doesn’t know why. He’s been good; he hasn’t tried to escape and he hasn't fought Dean, even when Dean grabbed an old biscuit tin, and stuck him in it, and poked a couple of air holes in the lid.

And then threatened to go bury it out back of the bunker somewhere; even took the tin outside, letting him panic and yell and beg until he realised Dean wasn’t moving.

He was sitting balanced on the railing just outside the bunker, swaying the tin to imitate him walking, chortling at Sam’s terror.

Dean took him back inside, but left him in the tin for another hour, before finally letting him out. Sam clung shamelessly to those giant fingers, and thought _this is it, he’s broken me and it’s only been…_

But he didn't know how long it had been, could have been weeks or months, and since no help seemed to be coming, it didn’t really matter.

Still, he wants to know what Dean has planned.

Because while he can’t stop his brother from abusing him, if he knows what’s coming…. 

He still can’t do anything about it.

But he doesn’t have it in him to just give up.

Dean takes him and puts him down on the big table in the library, and then he leaves the room, tauntingly telling Sam to stay put.

Like there’s anywhere he can go; like this, jumping from the table would kill him. Even trying to jump to a chair would likely result in serious injury, and where could he go then anyway? He’d just be standing somewhere else when Dean came back, and that, to his brother, would count as an escape attempt.

But when he sees what Dean has in his hands, he thinks a quick but broken death would be better.

Dean sets the snake down, and grins as it immediately fixates on Sam. To him, it’s huge, one of those prehistoric constrictors Dean refused to watch that documentary about.

He doesn’t seem to have a problem with snakes now, though, and folds his arms to watch the entertainment.

“You’re not scared of that scaly baby, are you, Sammy? Found it outside, figured it was hungry. I don’t know what to feed baby snakes, but I figure tiny baby brothers are probably on the menu.”

The snake curves towards him, and Sam knows there’s no point in running. He has nowhere to go, and likely that will just egg the snake on, and he knows how fast even baby snakes can move when hunting, how fast they can strike.

He doesn’t know if this snake will poison him, or try to constrict him or if he’s small enough that it’ll just try to wolf him down. 

He looks desperately at Dean, because whatever Dean’s done to him since he changed, (and he has changed, something happened to him, because the only times Dean’s ever hurt him have been when something’s been in control of him) he’s never let it go past a certain point.

But Sam can’t be sure Dean’s faster than a snake. Or that he hasn’t finally got to the point where tormenting Sam, scaring him, isn’t enough.

He wants blood this time; wants Sam to suffer right before he dies.

The snake’s close now, starts to slow, readying itself to make a lunge for him.

Sam looks desperately at Dean, and he isn’t ashamed to beg.

But it makes no difference. Dean makes a jokey shrug, as if he’d _like_ to help but what can he do?

And that’s when Sam hears the bunker door slam shut, and a familiar footfall echoes on the stairs.

Sam doesn’t waste any time in screaming to Cas for help.

++

He can’t stop shaking. Cas has him wrapped in blankets, and tried to get him to keep to his room, or wait in the war room (Sam doesn’t think he’ll ever set foot in the library again).

But Sam can’t settle anywhere that Cas isn’t, even now he’s back to towering over the angel, and so Cas ends up bringing in a second chair for him, and they sit together to wait for Dean to wake up.

He’s restrained, though Cas is sure he’s purged the last of the spell from Dean’s system, but he’s also not taking chances with Sam’s safety.

Sam knows Cas feels guilty, but none of this is his fault. It isn’t his fault that Dean always lied on the phone when Cas called. It isn’t his fault that Dean tampered with the bunker’s wards, making sure that none of Sam’s prayers made it past the walls.

It isn’t his fault that Dean found a booby trap by accident when he was trying to fix the wiring, changing his brother into a very different animal who came back to Sam’s side.

It’s Ketch’s fault, Ketch who apparently planted the curse trap there back when there were slightly less cordial with each other than they are now, and just forget to say.

Cas has put the box containing the curse in another curse box just to be safe, but Sam knows if Ketch wants to live a little longer, he’d better find someplace on Earth where angels just can’t go.

But Dean wakes up a few hours later, and Sam knows the minute his memory comes back, from the ‘about to be sick’ look on his brother’s face.

He wants to go to him, he does, but it’s like some invisible force has him pinned to the seat.

No matter how desperate Dean is for Sam to come to him, forgive him, Sam can’t move.

He knows he should, wants to, but it’s not that different from being trapped on the table, that snake zeroing in on him, right up until Cas snatches Sam almost from its jaws, catching the snake with his other hand when it lunges, and knocking it cold.

And then he’d turned his attention to Dean.

“Sam,” Dean says, and his voice is so broken that Sam feels more torn that he’s ever felt.

But he can’t; he can only watch as Cas moves to the bed and pulls Dean into his arms, and murmurs quiet reassurances, but all through that, it’s Sam that Dean’s staring at.

++

They come to a kind of understanding.

Sam can only relax when Cas is near him. That means Cas moves into Sam’s room, and it’s not as awkward as he imagined, not compared to the ever present fear of Dean murdering him brutally after managing to shrink him again.

Cas still isn’t sure how Dean managed that, but with him there Dean won’t be able to do it again.

And since Dean’s cured, that shouldn’t be a concern.

But Sam thinks Cas got a fright too, because he stops leaving the bunker. In a twisted way, Dean’s greatest wish has come true.

He wanted Cas to stop going away, because when he went away, bad things happened. Usually to Cas, so maybe it was just their turn there.

Sam...Sam felt the same, though knew staying cooped up in an underground facility wasn’t exactly healthy either (and sometimes, no safer).

Now, though, he and Dean (not that they’ve discussed it, because any conversation is stilted and formal, as if they’re two strangers thrown together by circumstance) are almost desperately grateful when Cas just...stays.

The only exception being when he has to go and get food for his humans, and then he takes either Sam, or he takes Dean, because somewhere in these new unwritten rules they’ve all apparently agreed on even if they’ve never had two words on it, neither brother wants to be left alone with the other, just in case.

It feels wrong, and Sam knows they’ve been in situations like this before, but this time…. This time they just don’t seem able to get past it.

++

He should have known that Cas wouldn’t just leave things as they were.

So, two weeks after he came home to find Sam about to get eaten by a snake while Dean watched with a gleeful look on his face, Cas leads Sam to the war room and then goes to find Dean.

Dean slinks after him, and Sam notices he’s brother isn’t looking so hot. There’s a gauntness about him, and he remembers Cas mentioning, worried, to him that Dean didn’t seem to be eating as much as he usually did.

But Sam seems to have a protective filter this days when his brother’s mentioned; like his head wants to protect him, somehow, and tunes out anything Dean-related before he can hear too much.

Dean takes a seat, and Cas tells them both they are going on a hunt.

The initial protest is just a stunned silence, and then they both start in, talking over each other, reasons and excuses, and none of it holds water, they both know that, but Cas lets them get it out until they can see he isn’t budging.

“We’re going,” he says. “Pack a bag.”

++

Dean drives.

Cas sits up front, and Sam sits in the back, trying not to drum his fingers on the seat, or his knee, or spend the next three hours shifting around nervously.

It’s not a complicated hunt. Two vampires, turned a little feral like happens sometimes, easy enough for one of them to deal with never mind all three.

But it’s the guy driving the car that Sam’s more concerned about. He knows, Cas has promised, and Sam has seem it for himself, that Dean is cured of the curse that caused that nightmare.

Knowing it, and being able to believe it are two wholly different things. Sam still flinches when Dean moves, and looks for Cas’s presence as an assurance he won’t suddenly find himself six inches tall again, with something ready to swallow him whole.

His dreams are full of torment and painful death, until he can feel Cas’s Grace stealing into his mind to drive them away and let him sleep.

His days are just as full of fear, where it’s Cas’s presence that’s the balm. Because Cas won’t let Sam get hurt.

But not being able to feel safe around Dean is killing both of them, slowly, and Sam knows if this isn’t fixed, somehow, one of them is going to have to go.

He knows it’ll be Dean; Dean feels this is all on him, and even though the bunker is everything Dean’s ever wanted and needed in terms of a home, he’d still go before he let Sam do it.

Then there’s no more time for thinking about how this might be their last hunt. Dean’s pulling up, and they’re booking a motel room, and getting changed, and heading out to find the two troublesome vamps before separating them from their heads.

++

It goes like this. 

There are not two vamps. 

There are more like a dozen.

The hunter who phoned Cas, looking to pass the hunt to the Winchesters, was Alec Louis Herne, a stranger to Cas, but infamous in hunting circles.

If Sam had known, he’d have put on the brakes, or at least had them do a little digging first.

Because Herne is the worst hunter ever to draw a demon trap, and if he says there are two feral vamps, you could bet it meant there were probably ten more.

They were, though, all feral, which was unusual, and deadly.

By the time they’re done, Cas is a broken bloody mess hanging between them, neck torn near open, eyes glazed and body wracked with pain.

He’d saved them, but this is the cost, and Sam’s never so grateful to get him into the motel room and down on to the bed so they can settle him there and see just how bad it all is.

It’s bad. The vamps might have been feral but they weren’t stupid. They separated the three of them and Sam knew part of the reason they’d been able to do so was this….this _thing_ between him and Dean, affecting their ability to communicate, to read each other and know what they were going to do next without actually having to say it.

And Cas had seen that, and he’d focused so much on getting to them that he didn’t see one of the vamps had scooped up the angel blade Dean had dropped when he’d been driven back.

Sam had, though, and screamed a warning, and that’s why Cas is alive right now.

Because Cas was able to turn in time and parry the blow so that it sliced open his side instead of burying itself in his back.

Even hurt, with his family in danger, Cas had torn through as many vamps as he could, before he went down, but by then he’d knocked their numbers down to where Dean and Sam had been able to break free and finish the rest and now here they are.

With Cas stabbed and bitten and torn, and some of the wounds are so red and angry looking that Sam doesn’t know if they’re worse than the startling gleam of grace from where he was knifed.

But he’ll be okay.

“His Grace’ll kick in,” Sam says, and then shuts up because those are the first words he’s said to his brother in weeks that aren’t uttered out of some obligation to break an awkward, painful silence.

Dean has his hand pressed to Cas’s forehead, and two fingers settled over the angel’s neck, feeling his pulse.

“Not risking it,” he says, and then he’s grabbing the bag with their first aid kit and dumping it down on the bed beside the angel. “C’mon, Sammy, get him fully stripped.”

Sam’s half way through wrestling Cas’s shirt and pants off when he realises what Dean said, but then there’s a deep bite oozing more blood than it seems like Cas can spare, and they even find a tooth broken off in one wound, and holy shit this might be the worst they’ve seen Cas in a long time, and for the next hour or so, taking care of him is all they can focus on.

++

By the time they’re done, they’re both too tired to think over much about anything.

Cas is a mess of stitches and dressings against pale skin, but he’s alive.

Dean sits against the wall closest to the bed, watching the angel through half shut eyes; Sam’s in the chair on the other side, close enough to Cas to protect (and, he guesses, be protected, though it’s clear Cas isn’t capable of guarding him right now).

But Dean looks wrecked, so Sam figures he’s safe enough.

Even so, though he’s desperate to sleep, he doesn’t dare. 

His head jerks a few times when he almost does anyway, body so exhausted it’s overriding his survival instinct.

Dean must see it. He keeps his voice low when he calls over to his brother, as if worried he might somehow wake Cas.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Sam. You can sleep if you want. I’ll watch over Cas.”

He can hear what Dean doesn’t say: _I’ll watch over you as well_.

And he wants to listen, he does. He wants to forget those couple of days happened, wants to wipe everything from just before the power cut right up to when Cas changed him back and undid the dark power working on and through his brother.

But he has a book full of things he wants to erase. Mistakes he made that hurt others; mistakes others made that hurt him. 

There’s a life somewhere he could have lived if not for all the shit that befell him, but is there a single person who ever lived that couldn’t say the same?

Probably different shit for them, though. Banal, dull everyday shit like divorce and sickness and car accidents and bad grades.

Since there’s no magic _edit_ key, he’ll have to do with this the same as he’s done with every other thing that’s tried to break him.

Refuse to let it.

Use his head, and work through it and keep going.

Because Dean’s had the better part of two hours now to hurt him. Cas has been there but so hurt that he’s locked down while his body tries to heal.

Dean could have done anything and, Sam knows for sure now, that his brother’s imagination is wild enough to come up with a lot of sick ideas.

But all Dean’s done is patch up their angel, with him helping, and then sag down against the wall as how close they came to losing Cas again breaks over him.

And maybe not just that.

It takes everything Sam has to get up, and to go around Cas’s bed. His feet don’t want to move, his body wanting no part of it, but Sam keeps going anyway, until he’s standing over Dean, and Dean is looking up at him like he wants to believe this is what it seems like, but knows it’s nothing he deserves.

Sam lowers himself carefully to sit next to Dean, inching closer until he’s lined up hip to shoulder.

He doesn’t do anything for a while, or say anything, but then he lifts his arm and tucks it around Dean’s shoulder, guiding his brother to rest his weight against him.

“Cas’ll be okay,” Sam says. “Why don’t we both get some sleep?”

And, maybe, for once, someone out there can look after _all_ of them.


End file.
